Dear friends,

It is a pleasure to write to you all, in my first newsletter to The Elders’ supporters. It was a great honour to be invited to join this prestigious group last year, and I am looking forward to working with my colleagues on some of the biggest global challenges facing our world today.

Supporting dialogue and trust in Iran

One such challenge is to defuse the dangerous tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme and foreign policy and, through respectful dialogue and effective collaboration, to have this noble country integrated into the global community as a trusted partner, at ease with its neighbours and the wider world.

Last month I joined my fellow Elders in Tehran to meet with the Iranian leadership. In our first visit to Iran, we hoped to encourage the new spirit of openness and dialogue that we have seen in recent months. Our visit reaffirmed my conviction that there is a real opportunity for Iran, now more than for many years, to become a constructive and respected member of the international community.

As I said while we were there, Iran is at a crossroads. Its well-educated and cultured people deserve to fulfil their huge development potential and take their rightful place in the world. But Iran, too, must play its part by sustaining and delivering its new policy of engagement, to which the international community must respond positively and effectively.

This would be good news for the world – we need Iran to emerge from its marginalisation and become an active contributor to peace, stability and development in the Middle East, and globally. And it would be good news for the Iranian people, especially the large number of youth, who are ready to seize the opportunities that this time of greater engagement has to offer. This would be an outcome that would be of great political and economic benefit to everyone.

Best wishes,

Ernesto Zedillo

Did you miss?

PHOTOS: Elders in Iran: encouraging openness and trust				OPINION: A united call for action on climate change | Kofi Annan

NEW POSITION STATEMENT: The Elders on climate justice				INTERVIEW: The frontlines of leadership, from two ex-Presidents | Martti Ahtisaari & Mary Robinson